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29 April 2015

[Tablet] One of the things that’s fascinating
about my WASPy friends and compatriots is that so many dislike the State
of Israel, to varying degrees. It bugs them. What interests me is
trying to suss out the underlying or psychological impetus or sense of
injury beneath these feelings, which are frankly less common in general
among American gentiles than they are among American Jews. When I’ve
asked them, “Why does this particular injustice bother you so much – why
not Tibet?” the answers are very interesting. They come down to
something like, “Why on one hand do you Jewish people come to us and say
we have to be democratic and inclusive because otherwise we’re
anti-Semites, and then back in the old country, where you go on your
family vacations or Birthright trips, you get to strut around with
automatic weapons and oppress everybody else, which isn’t fair, and is
probably what we would want to do here, in some secret corner of our
WASPy brains.”

[Ginsberg] That is a very good line, and I think it’s totally true. The animus is some form of displaced anti-Semitism.

Say what? Displaced anti-Semitism would be if these Whites used
Jewish hypocrisy as an excuse from some deep irrational hatred of Jews.
But isn’t hypocrisy always seen as a negative? The White Protestants who
are on trial here assume a principled morality. They assume that if
inclusiveness is a moral imperative in the U.S. as our intellectual
elites constantly tell us, it must be a moral imperative everywhere. But
many of the same people who advocate inclusiveness in the U.S. advocate
oppression in Israel. And there’s resentment by many Whites because as a
result of the moral imperative of inclusiveness in the U.S., they are
losing the country. So, yes, there is probably a “secret corner” of
their brains where they would like to reassert themselves and boot out
or oppress the interlopers. But that has to remain secret on pain of job
loss and social opprobrium. Because they no longer command the moral
and political high ground, they don’t dare say that.

[Tablet] Is that what I’m saying? I
actually think that American Jews are in this sense way too quick to
label such feelings as anti-Semitism, even when the effects may be
anti-Semitic.

[Ginsberg] I think you’ve characterized it very well. It’s not 1930s
anti-Semitism, but it’s a resentment. It’s a resentment of a particular
evil that the Jews have done, which is the Jews have undermined WASP
America but refuse to do the same thing in their own country.
You know, there’s an old joke: Three elderly Jewish Communists in the
Bronx are talking. They’re in their eighties. One is in a wheelchair.
So they say, “Abie Cohen, have you heard from him lately?” “Abie, he’s
had some health problems but he’s living in Los Angeles in a nursing
home, still working for socialism.” “All right, what about Mike
Abramowitz, have you heard from him?” “Well, you know Mike is in rehab,
he fell, he broke his hip, a lot of problems. But even in the nursing
home he’s fighting for socialism!” So someone says, “What about Moe
Goldberg?” “Oh, Moe, he moved to Israel, didn’t you know that?” “Well,
is he fighting for socialism?” The guy answers, “In his own country?
What kind of man do you think he is?!”

The joke would be mildly humorous except that the Jewish left has
been spectacularly successful. So I am not laughing because the not so
hidden agenda of the left has been the displacement of the people and
culture of European societies throughout the West. Again we see the
double standards and hypocrisy inherent in a movement led by strongly
ethnocentric activists intent on displacing the previously dominant
Protestant elite and in the process becoming an elite themselves.
Policies that are advocated in the Diaspora are rejected for Israel. The
Protestant elite that was endlessly criticized for being non-inclusive
turns out to be way more inclusive than their critics.

So I think as Jewish humor often does, that captures the
point that you made. I’ve actually had students say exactly this. They
say, “How come in my high school we couldn’t sing Christmas carols;
however, in Israel they can establish a religion?” And they believe that
it was the Jews who brought this about in the United States. And are
they wrong? No.

Or to rephrase his comments, I imagine students saying

“How come in my high school Whites are a minority in the
same school that was all-White when my parents attended. However, in
Israel they can enact immigration lawsthat
keep out non-Jews?” And they believe that it was the Jews who brought
this about in the United States. And are they wrong? No.

Ginsberg’s comments are another example of a phenomenon noticed by Andrew Joyce:
“It appears that Jews are becoming more and more flamboyant and
confident (or aggressive) in asserting their dominance. While the ADL
would like us not to think of Jewish power and influence at all, there
are recurrent examples where Jews unabashedly assert their influence.”